#157 - Let's Talk: Minimalism v. Luxury

Beyond the Present Podcast

Showing off wealth and luxuries is at an all-time high thanks to the influence of social media but what about all the other individuals who resort to a life of minimalism? In this episode of BTP, we contrast luxury with minimalism and offer our solution to strike the right balance between the two.

Daniel's Social: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danmolgan/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Danmolgan LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-molgan-41812352/ Pouya's Social: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pouyalj/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/pouyalj LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pouyalajevardi/ Episode Transcript... ----more----

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

luxury, minimalistic, money, minimalism, people, traveling, spend, buy, life, minimalist, mining, lambo, check, cars, education, luggage, pandemic, absolutely, photos, lifestyle

SPEAKERS

Pouya LJ, Dan

Pouya LJ 00:09

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to yet another episode of The BTP podcast. I'm joined as always with Daniel Mulligan, how's it going, man?

Dan 00:17

Whatever, man, buddy, how's it going? How are you good to hear your voice Been a while, we've been super busy with a lot of things here, and I'm sure you're there as well. So life is absolutely great, I'm actually getting on the road these days a lot more frequently than I used to. So we're getting out of that, you know, pandemic lockdown mode, basically. So I'm pretty excited. I've already actually sorted a lot of my trips. Although these days for the sake of not having to deal with major problems, I actually keep most of my trips much shorter than usual. So if I used to stay in any country for like, one month and a half now it's like more like a week or two, to make sure that there's going to be any major problems. But fortunately, we're seeing gradually the world is opening up. And thanks to, you know, a wide spread vaccination basically. So that's a very good news for people like us who are always on the road and who don't want to just deal with the hassles of having to go through these bs checkups and bring your results. And now we have things like you know, vaccination, passports and so on, which are pretty good, although it's a little bit political, but very good. This is definitely gonna, you know, accelerate the process, moving around, and just, it's gonna open up the borders and make it easier. So I'm pretty happy about that one. And life is great. On my side, haven't you man? How are things? I literally was shocked when I saw a couple of photos you sent me yesterday about you mining Bitcoin with those fancy devices, man. So what's the story in it?

Pouya LJ 01:41

Well, you Oh, actually, I'm actually mining etherium. But yeah, that's it's I don't know, it was one of those things that I picked up during the pandemic, essentially. Yeah,

Dan 01:51

it's probably, I don't know, maybe on your Instagram page or something you just probably shared. That stuff looked really like it was crazy, man. It didn't look like a normal thing to happen. And like, it seems super fancy as if like you have like no laboratory dedicated entirely to cryptocurrency mining or something. It was pretty cool. I mean, maybe should later check and check it out. Guys. I can go to his Instagram. See from the photos. It's really fun. So how long has it been since you've been mining?

Pouya LJ 02:20

Yeah, I'll drop those photos in the shadows too. Just Just because we talked about it. Yeah, it's been I think it's been since late February, something like that. Yeah.

Dan 02:31

You're late starters, it has a lot more than you know, it's not like, four or five months or something.

Pouya LJ 02:36

Yeah, I know. It hasn't been that long. And honestly, at that point, I was trying to pick up a project. And I was looking at, okay, what's out there and I've done this, I've done that. I want to do that later. It's gonna be a lot of time. And then I came across this one, I was like, You know what, why not do this? I haven't done this for so long. It's it's a good time to pick it up. And I did. And I was like, You know what, it's also a good passive income kind of thing. So I mean, I'm not

Dan 03:03

actually listed with the income aspect of it. I mean, I don't know about things in Canada. Are there any taxations By the way, for any mining, or you're not going to be taxed?

Pouya LJ 03:11

Yeah. So not for mining per se. I suppose. If you sell it in in the form of cash then it might be but I have no intention of selling me so I'm not actually selling any of them. So in

Dan 03:26

the Canadian government, so you guys back off.

Pouya LJ 03:30

Yeah, no.

Dan 03:32

taxable a lot. I mean, they're, they're like Europeans. They tax.

Pouya LJ 03:35

Yeah, no, I mean, that's true. But on the other hand, they only texted on currency, as far as I know. Like, I mean, there's no it's not

Dan 03:42

like the US where you're basically crypto wallet is also centered your taxation. It's not like that yet in Canada.

Pouya LJ 03:49

Yes. So I'm not too too sure. Like whoever listening in Canada don't take this as advice to be honest with you, but I'm pretty sure if you hold it as that currency No, but if you do sell it, then you have to Why do you have to so if so, for example, let's say you bought $100,000 I mean, that's a long large sum. But let's say you buy $100,000 worth of whatever bitcoins, let's say, and then you sold it again now you're on 120. So it's similar to stock markets. I saw that prop So yeah, I think Yeah, exactly. I think that's still stays the same. But mining they don't like I don't know technically, that's pure profit, I suppose. But on the other hand, it's not really and it's not so my project is not that massive to be extremely noticeable when I'm talking about it. I guess it's public, but either way I when I if

Dan 04:41

you share those photos, people are gonna change their mind.

Pouya LJ 04:44

No, but if I if I had to be absolutely honest, if I do sell it, I'm going to declare it in my tax returns, no doubt, but I have absolutely no intention of selling it.

Dan 04:53

That's the culture of Canada. These guys just love their government. They're so peaceful they they share all the electricity What I made and here's my tax I'm gonna pay some extra for the sake of the community. Love the Government of Canada. Yeah, that's right.

Pouya LJ 05:05

I don't know taxes to be honest with you absolutely do not. I mean, you got to do what you got to do.

Dan 05:11

I see and one thing is gonna be like profitable. Do you think in Canada, given the cost of the equipment, the electricity and so on? Oh, yeah. So thankfully,

Pouya LJ 05:19

I had some of my equipments from ways back. And the other ones that I added on along the road. A I managed to get at a very decent prices. So yeah, those those Oh, man, so shopping them, I

Dan 05:33

don't know, Black Friday, something you get, like 90% off and something and start mining that stuff.

Pouya LJ 05:38

Yeah, it wasn't particularly like 90% off. But yeah, I got a I got a few good deals, here and there. And you know, how they're very rare these days. So I know, right? If you can even get it out. MSRP it's I think it's fairly fairly good price. But, but yeah, so the class costs are were too high. And electricity is not too bad. Actually, I don't pay electricity at my place, specifically. So it's kind of included. Oh, so you're renting now? Right? Yeah, I rent.

Dan 06:08

That's like that's like miners dream country?

Pouya LJ 06:11

Exactly. I mean, again,

Dan 06:12

I'm not sure about your landlord. Probably.

Pouya LJ 06:15

No, no, my landlord doesn't pay either. It's so the condominium entirely is basically paying one utility for everybody. And again, my project is not so so big that it would cost like if I were to pay it, it would probably add, I don't know, approximately less than 50 Canadian dollars per month. Wow. Okay, I

Dan 06:38

got it. That's right, pretty well, pretty well, but overall, nice, nice, you know, thing and to hope you're gonna succeed. And you can later on later on share with us exactly what happened and how the whole thing went out?

Pouya LJ 06:49

Oh, yeah, for sure. Well, we'll have episodes on that for whoever's interested. Today, though, we're talking about something slightly different. Actually, we can relate it to anything for actually I thought about relating to things already. So it's basically minimalism versus luxury. Let's, let's define them first. I guess for those who don't know why luxury, I think everybody knows. But let's define minimalism. For those who might not have heard of it.

Dan 07:13

I can guess, right? Well, very nice. Of course, the word itself is self explanatory. It comes from the word minimal, meaning living, basically, your life in a way that you just spent enough to meet all of your basic needs, without any money spent on things that are not absolutely necessary. So of course, what is truly necessary, it is really subjective, I guess, it depends on who you are, your background and so on. However, I think that in the end, it really comes down to you living kind of like, you know, below your means as much as possible to make sure that your life is sustainable. And you're not having a you know, a lot of basically consumption at the end of the month, basically, which is called minimalism. Now, there are various types of minimalism some of the extremist types, where they have to just, you know, literally, you have to live in a cave somewhere or something in that situation. Yeah, probably, it's gonna be weird. But ultimately, it's about living below your means trying to save as much as possible. So the focus in that lifestyle is much more about spending less. And in a luxury lifestyle is much more about making more. So these are two very different approaches to life, those who are on the, you know, luxury lifestyle category, they don't believe in not spending, basically, they believe in spending more, but they have to focus on earning more as well. And those who are on the minimalistic side, their focus is mainly on spending less. So they tend to spend their time and life basically in very different ways. And they end up having very different lifestyles. So that's what you know, we were talking about minimalism versus luxury lifestyle, this first lecture, we already know what that means. And there is pretty much no limit to how luxury your life can get. And when it comes to minimalism, however, there are some basic limits, I mean, us really can have, you can literally go on so many few meals per week, right? So you can, there's a lot there's a bottom limit. When it comes to luxury, there's actually you know, the sky's the limit, basically.

Pouya LJ 09:09

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so I actually thought about a few things to relate to whatever we said before now, let's go back to your so you were telling you're back on the road, you're traveling and you know, and you were saying you're on the road a lot, so you don't stay for long periods of time, particularly. And I was thinking actually, you know, a minimalist luggage would actually help a lot.

Dan 09:36

Unfortunately, I always travel with two languages that cover the problems that I have basically. Now, generally, that's not a big deal. It's my habit. Basically, I rarely travel with one luggage, mainly two languages, because I tend to stay as I mentioned earlier, usually Of course now the pandemic has changed that. But before the pandemic I rarely seen any place less than three weeks to a month. Basically so I need to have more clothes, some you know, for business some for, you know, going out and so on some you know, for the gym for that reason I rarely travel with only one luggage so I do not travel minimalistic that to be honest with you right now, because it's not possible for me, quite frankly. And I have a lot of devices. And I don't know, multiple phones, basically phone phones and both androids and iPhones for different countries. So it's kind of hard to put it all in one language and just call it a minimalistic Well, let's go man, I just got this tiny little luggage here. That is not for me, unfortunately. But I sometimes like these people who are traveling with like, you know, like luggage and like, Dude, this guy's ready. It's so much easier that way, I guess for these guys. Right? And generally, it's their style, but for me, unfortunately, I tend to be on the heavy luggage type basically. So if I'm not flying business, then I should always pay extra for basically the luggage.

Pouya LJ 10:53

Gotcha. Gotcha now, so Okay, the reason I mentioned this is so I don't know to me like I know some people adapt luxury or minimalism as a way of life very generally. So basically applying it to all aspects. But for me, I think you know, as Jocko with Jocko Willink would say it's there's, for me, there's a dichotomy, like, there are some things that I absolutely go minimalistic, for example, and this is not by any philosophy or anything, it's just by happenstance, now that I'm thinking about it, for example, travel. Now, I'm not saying I'm gonna go with a fanny pack. I'm not that minimalistic, but I'm relatively minimal minimalistic, let's say, compared to average. And that is, like, I go with as little, you know, luggage as possible, maybe a backpack and a small suitcase? That would be that would be I mean, I also I'm not going on, you know, these kind of travels that you do, you know, I don't need that much stuff. So, my point is that I think it, it's very area dependent. For me personally, in some areas, I'm fairly minimalistic, and I'm so so for example, I have three monitors. That's absolutely not minimalist.

Dan 12:03

I'm pretty sure when it comes to tech, you're definitely not a minimalist. Take a look at that photo, guys. And in the show notes, you'll see that that is not minimalist at all.

Pouya LJ 12:10

Yeah, no, that's, that's, that's what I mean, like, so I think read monitors just

Dan 12:13

in that frame. Just look around the house, you're gonna find out there four or five display somewhere else?

Pouya LJ 12:18

Well, the TV's separate, obviously. No, no, but so do you see it this way, as well? Or is it

Dan 12:26

again, you see, that's what you said, it's about lifestyle. Man, you are definitely not minimalistic when it comes to, this is what I what I think about you, I'm pretty sure you are not minimalist when it comes to technology, or even education. Because I mean, for example, you have a huge desire for learning a lot of new things. You're not a minimalist, minimalist, says, Oh, I got my Bible, I got my Bible, and that's all I ever need from Allah. I'ma read the Bible all the time. That's the only book I need. So, if you're one of those, yeah, that's called minimalism regarding education, right? The Bible, the Bible is all information. God knows all I got the book

Pouya LJ 13:02

has all the information from 10,000 years ago into that, right? Of course,

Dan 13:05

and that's the only one I love me. So that's gonna be basically, you know, educational minimalism, if you will, right? People who are like that will live very differently, right? And not that there's anything wrong with that, of course, we respect people of all faiths and beliefs. It's just that someone who lives that way will have a very different life than someone like Fujitsu. I don't know, loves technology reach a lot and you know, pursue education abroad, right. So these are the, you know, these who are going to have very different lifestyles, right? So minimalism is relative. But usually, when people talk about luxury, they only talk about one aspect, which is, you know, the money and all that stuff, right. But in fact, luxury can be literally defined, depending on how you live, for example, one of the biggest luxuries would actually talk about this issue not long ago, in one of our programs. Generally, luxury can be seen in variety of, you know, wage, yes. When we say the luxury people think of, I don't know, Chanel and for example, you know, leave a ton and super expensive, you know, cars and so on, because they are looking at luxury from a consumers perspective, right, or from a, you know, vanity point of view, right? Oh, show off and all that stuff. But luxury could be seen as you having enough time every morning to go for a jog, without having to rush to work because you know, you are working, you know, running your own business, again, actually dedicate a couple hours in the morning for, you know, some jogging without having to worry about the traffic, right? That's a luxury. And I think that for me personally, as you probably know, that's one of my luxury that I had every day. And I value that a lot more than I don't know, having to always, you know, be in a super fancy car. So if you told me down, I'm gonna give you right now a lifestyle where you can drive a fancy car every single day, or you can have that one hour in the morning for, you know, jogging, and you know, somehow meditation or something like this. I will pick the second one because that for me is a lot more valuable, right? Which is why we should look at minimalism the luxury in different contexts. That by default is about you know, vanity, buying stuff large homes, I don't know, cool, fancy travels and whatnot. But even if it comes to travel, I'm actually really not a fan of most people will let you know what people call traveling, I don't know your book, I don't know, three days stay in a super fancy hotel, you go there, and you're there for three days. And that's it. That's not traveling, when I'm traveling, I want to be there, I want to, I want to feel the country, I want to speak his language, I want to know the culture I want to be and you know, be there for at least three weeks to, you know, one month, one month and a half, to fully immerse myself in their culture, and that it's a form of luxury, which sometimes can actually cost a lot less than your super fancy five star hotel travels, right? So it really I think depends on our value in life. If it, you know, comes straily about you know, just the money and all that yeah, it's just about minimalism means you spend less money, and luxury means you spend more money, but we have different types of luxuries and different types of luxuries bring different types of you know, for example, experiences in life, which is why we should look at this issue somehow subjectively and divide it into different groups of luxuries in different groups. It could be extremely wealthy, and drive fancy cars and you know, drive, get a private jet, but be financially minimalistic, or sorry, be educationally minimalistic, or be physically minimalistic. This means that you don't take care of your body, for example, I don't have time to learn new things, and All you think about is to make more money. And at the end of the week, you say, Well, I'm gonna go to church have a good time I get my Bible, that's all one thing. So this is one lifestyle, this guy lives a very, very high quality, luxury, you know, lifestyle in terms of how he spends his money. But in terms of education, and in terms of health, this person is minimalistic, because he has no time for an ability to shape or improving, you know, perhaps his or her knowledge, right? At the same time, you could have a college kid who has a lot of time in the world for, you know, building a good shape and learning a lot of things but might not have enough money for traveling or buying, you know things right. So generally, I personally, as I've already mentioned, I'm not generally a fan of luxury in his traditional sense, because luxury generally is pretty much about showing off, right? Look at me, look at what I got. And I personally believe that people who try to show off with wealth, especially nowadays, thanks to social media is becoming even more popular. I don't know, you get your show off, you're driving your Lambo. And you take a photo with this, you know, cool thing you got on the yacht in here, or Yeah, I'm an accountant, a junior accountant in this company that I hate, but I'm traveling all the time, take a look at my photos. So these are the things that people tend to show off with which I am against, because I really believe that that can only develop, you know, resentment among those who are less financially fortunate. And ironically, it's not even necessary, because the problem is showing up with money as this money can be transferred to you without you doing anything, you can just inherit that you can just win in the lottery right? And trying to show off with money. And let's be honest, this could just be totally faked. Right, just downright you just, you know, rent a Lambo for two days, that's your entire month's salary, and then you start showing off to create a course on how they can become wealthy. Well, if you want to look at it, you know, basically, as a business point of view, no problem. I mean, you're a scammer No problem, you just got to put your months of salary you earn working in McDonald's, to, you know, take a couple of videos for two days and then create an online course how to become rich. Yeah, you could do that. It's not necessarily an ethical approach to you know, making money, but it is one way to do it. And unfortunately, people who are on social media, you know, do these kinds of things, unfortunately. But in reality, I believe that there are far better ways to show off than just buying luxury, the best, which, of course, is who you are, I think, who you are and how valuable you are, and how much contribution you can make to society are far better signs of how worthy you are than how much money that there are many people in this world. We're not millionaires or billionaires, but who are making great contributions or who have great abilities that can make them stand out and I think focusing on who you are, and your abilities will be a lot more effective means of trying to perhaps show your worth then everybody ready nobody's no one's gonna say like, yeah, I want to do the same thing. I'm a piece of shit that was going to say that the need for self esteem is a basic need as part of it, you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, everybody wants to feel that sense of self is everybody wants to feel good about themselves. I am so and of course when that feeling disappears, we have things like depression, suicidal thoughts, and so on. So everybody has to have a self esteem, nobody has to feel good about themselves. And the feedback we get from others definitely does matter. But in the end, you can do that by buying fake Gucci's and pretending to be someone you're not. Or you can simply do it by showing how great you are when it when it comes to painting, or how such a great thinker you are, how such a great athlete you are, how fast you can run or I don't know how well you perform on the stage. When you do your, you know, theatrical plays. There are many ways for us to show our worth. And I think the worst Way to show your worth is by money, because that is probably the, it accomplishes the exact opposite. When a person says, check out my cash, Oh, I got 200,000 in my hand, that's all by the way, like $1 bills, something that you want to get looks so big in front of the camera, I'll look at all these bills in my hand, I'm so rich. Well, what that person is trying to say is look at me. I'm good. Please tell me I'm good. And please love me. That's like the intention behind that, right? Or, alternatively, look at this. I grew up in filth, I came from a shitty background, but now I'm rage. So I'm the only rage and I feel I have a serious complex. So whatever you do, the impact of that will ultimately be negative. Those are like, Who's this idiot, man? Gosh. And sometimes this behavior actually attracts the wrong types of attention, thing criminals who say, Oh, this guy's got some, Where's his location? Oh, see? Or if you're working in business, the tax basically auditors. Oh, wait a minute, let me check this guy's Iris report, ah, this guy recorded only $30,000 of income. But this guy's driving a Lambo, oh, we're gonna go for a new audit. So basically, you end up accomplishing the exact opposite of what you hope for by trying to show up with money. On the other hand, imagine you show off by your ability to play chess, I'm the world's best chess player, no one can take that away from you. I'm show off with my ability to paint well, and I share my photos on Instagram of how such a great painter I am. Well, no one can take that away from you. But money could be stolen from you and could be taken away from you and can simply be faked. Or just got, you know, in order to become great, you know, a chess master, you got to put in the effort. But it can be rich overnight, without working so hard to become a great painter, you're gonna put in a lot of lot of, you know, hours into this to actually reach mastery. And once you get there, nobody can take it away from you, right? That's not the same with money, which is why I am vehemently against luxury, especially the way that we use to show off it just First of all, based on my estimation, most of the people who do show off with money generally aren't either that rich, or even if they are that rich, they probably are lowering their value in the eyes of other people. And but most luxuries are not purchased. I actually had a poster for this a while ago. And I actually looked at those around me, those whose net worth exceeded $100 million, and those who are like in a couple million. And you'll see that as the network comes down, luxury goes up. And as net worth goes up, the luxury comes down to the guy whose net worth is 100 million. You don't see him flashing cool stuff. And even if he has cool stuff, he doesn't show it to anybody. He just maybe some guys really love to drive a Lamborghini. Right? This is like he's a car nerd. Right? He drives his Lambo, but you're never gonna see that photo on his Instagram, right? And the guy who has his entire wealth is $3 million. gets himself I don't know, into trouble by buying two luxury cars and being under debt for many years. Right. Which is why I really consider that approach to you know, luxury to be extremely, basically, probably a great way to show how pathetic you feel and how empty your life is from the inside. Because those who already have the money, they don't really do it. And those who do it, in most cases probably don't have that much money. So just brings it into the whole dilemma back in the you know, the spotlight and how ineffective this bursary is.

Pouya LJ 23:26

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I was thinking about, you know, what I am, in this sense as you were talking and I think by default, I am a minimum. I think that might be true of everybody. I don't know, but at least me. I think by default, I'm generally minimalistic. And then I pick and choose. So for example, as you said technology, education health. I definitely i'm not i'm not shy to spend as much as necessary on three. So yeah, I can't think of anything else that is valuable to me personally, right now. I mean, I haven't thought about it too long. But right now that I'm non minimalistic, maybe a little bit luxury about it. Do you have any areas that you spend a lot of time attention money perhaps on besides I don't know, let's say travel?

Dan 24:14

Well, you mentioned the first one, by the way, I don't believe if you spend money on things you're passionate about that is not you know, showing off that is not you know, luxurious consumption. It's just because of your passion. I told you even if you have a Lamborghini, if you really are crazy. I have some friends who are crazy about cars, man, like, man, check out this. Check out the sound, man. It's so fucking cool, right? So these guys, and they talk about these things, right? This guy, if you really spend money on Lambo, even though it's expensive, that is not a luxury consumption, because this guy's passionate. You see, I consider luxury consumption to be done solely with the purpose of impressing other people, including buying things you don't really believe in, but you feel that gives you that attention. And then is the real. So it's really all about the intention. Bill Gates, loved cars, Bill Gates has a huge collection of cars from the very beginning of his, you know, his career, he still does. He's got many garages full of luxury cars, but not a single person on earth knows that. And not a single magazine has ever shown in brain one of these cars. He intentionally avoids that. You see, this guy is one of the richest men of the world. He's unfortunately, he's not the richest at this moment. But still, the point is this, this guy loved cars. And when he bought these cars, it wasn't for showing off was this. He's, you know, he's just quite crazy about these things, right? The same thing goes with anything else you can spend money on, you know, and spend big bucks on things you really are passionate about. But the question is, what is your intention? when I'm traveling? First of all, I don't even actually post a lot of these Oh, I'm here I'm there is location things often do? We don't travel that much. And number two, I don't even announced, you know, recently that much. Why? Because when I'm traveling, I'm not doing that to say, Oh, yeah, I'm traveling Check. Check this out. Because I from from a person that's like a lifestyle, right? The other thing I knew I spend money on is perhaps clothing and accessories. And again, that's purely because of a personal interest, not because I want to say oh, I spend a lot of nice branch. No, because I like the students, I believe that most men dress like shit. And I don't like that. I think that men should change their approach towards dressing. And if I could be a role model and help other men to change their salad dressing and pay a little bit more attention, not to dress like their grandpa's, maybe that'll be a good thing. But that's just for me personally, right? It's just a personal passion. But I have zero interest in things like luxury cars, or luxury brands, or I don't know, oh, check this out. I got this cool washing here. Yeah, I will have a decent watch a couple of them. But that's it. It's not just you know, to say, oh, check this out, by the way. Oh, what time is it? Man? Oh, that's right. It is 30 minutes to Rolex, good seeing ya. So that's not going to be like, I mean, that's just so pathetic when I hear these things. So I am vehemently against those types of luxuries, pretty much almost all of them. And when it comes to education, I have no lunch. I don't care about the price tag of anything education. Well, there's a seminar, whether it's an educational course, you do give me the price, I don't know, half a million dollars for this course, I'll take it no problem, because for me, education is always an investment. I see it as investment as soon as it tripling that money. So if I put a half a million under education, I'm gonna get a minimum a million, you know, and 500,000 back, right. For that reason, for education, I have no limits. Because for me, you can never learn something too much. Right? So that is just about the personal balance. And for me, that's what matters. So if I wanted to say, to which things I spend money on, you can actually check out you know, know these things by looking at your bills, because I literally do this. Each month, I look at you know, all my expenses, I use all of my, you know, bank accounts for different countries to see what actually spent money on. And it almost always comes down to education. It comes down to health and fitness, you know, healthy food, high quality nutrition, and supplements and vitamins, all that stuff, which I for me, there's no limit, health, healthcare, investing doctors at getting appointments, checkups. And of course, for things that directly helped me like traveling, clothing and so on. But I rarely spend money on things that are absolutely useless. Because for me, that's not going to change me, right? It's not going to make my life better. And if I ever do it, I'm doing it with the intention of impressing others. And that always backfires. Because the worst way to get other people's admiration is to do it directly. Like, oh, tell me I'm so great. Check out my car. Oh, I'm a piece of shit. I feel empty from the inside. Please tell me I'm good. Please look at my Lambo. Oh, no, please like it too. This only shows a big hole inside of you. Right? So any purchase I make? I make because of me not because I want to show it off, or because I want others to say wow. Because I believe that the best way to make up your mind about your expenditure is to ask yourself, Is it for me to actually want to buy anything? I'm pretty sure he did not buy those cool gadgets for mining because you wanted to show off that Oh, check out No, you want it for you. You spend money for education because of you. And when you spend money because of you because of utility and really what you are passionate about that is I think the right expense. But unfortunately, a lot of times we don't buy things because we wanted for us. Many people prefer basically Android to iPhone, but they have to buy an iPhone because that's you know, that's going to be cool. Or I myself, I always get the latest iPhones because I love iPhone, but I never buy the pro version. Why? Because I hate to say like, Oh, my camera got my camera got three lenses and yours got only two. That's just so pathetic, which is why I intentionally always buy the latest iPhone but I always buy the basic version to make sure that it's not a luxury expense. I just use it for utility for the latest hardware for the latest, you know, benefits that comes with the latest iPhone, but I never go for these pro pro max all these crap basically Why? Because my intention is always one thing utility not show up with money.

Pouya LJ 30:15

Alright, I think that sums it up. That's that's a perfect way too. perfect place to stop. Is there anything you want to add? Or? We're good?

Dan 30:23

Well, that was a very special man. And I enjoy talking with you about these two things, we really are the question, we have this luxury approach to life. And we have this minimalistic. And as we probably know, the best approach is somewhere in the middle, I don't recommend our lives, like Daniel said, I should have abandoned Okay, I'm going to live in a cave. I'm going to drink goat's milk for the next two years. So that is not of course, effective. Right? money should be spent. That's how economies function. But the question is, why do you spend that money? So next time you made a purchase? It was I don't know, whatever item you wanted to purchase order online, ask yourself, Am I doing this for me? Or am I doing this to impress other people? Do I really need a you know, for example, the latest and the, you know, the most expensive version of this item? Or is it just to say that I have it right. And above all, please be aware of the prices manage your budget, maybe this item is really cool. But you have to have money left for savings for investments and other things. You know, living by the formula of wealth implies that you must always make sure that your expenses are less than your income. Most of us were the exact opposite. We always spend what we earn. And if our income goes up, we increase our consumption. And that's why most of us are never going to get rich. So ask yourself, have I saved enough money for a future in retirement or for some investment where we're buying real estate or buying stocks or investing in cryptocurrencies, whatever it is, or now, I just all my friends have the latest promax I want to get the promax to even though my entire salary this month. But Dude, that's a huge mistake. You can make that you know, purchase right now. But you're going to regret that a couple months down the line when the rent is due, and you don't have the cash and after what people you don't like. So you're gonna hate your job, you're gonna do some job you hate just to have that friggin phone. Are you kidding me? So for that reason, be aware of what your budget really is, like, make wise decisions. And always ask yourself, am I buying this for me? am I buying this because I want a certain type of reaction from other people. Because if you buy it for you, that's always okay. No problem. But unfortunately, a lot of our purchases, especially the ones that are luxury, are not for us, we're not really doing that because we need it or because we want it or even because we like it. I know people who hate sports cars, but they have to, you know, keep up with the Joneses. Because this other guy who's also a banker has it, so why not? And they hate it. They like oh gosh, this card is so fast. And so should I hate it. You know what, I gotta keep the image. So ask yourself is really from your for the other people. Because the worst thing you can do in your life, is to buy things you don't need. With the money, you don't have to impress the people you don't even like that's like the worst side of you know, capitalism. And please, if you're now listening to us avoid this approach as much as possible.

Pouya LJ 33:17

Okay, no, that was great. I think that makes a lot of sense. I think you should live by that every day of the week and every week of the year. Alright, thanks again, Dan, for joining us for another fantastic conversation. My pleasure. And thank you everybody for listening and tuning in. And if you have any thoughts, feel free to share it with us. You know where you know how. All right until later episode. Have a good day.